


my atlantis

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Introspection, Post-Canon, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro POV, mild s6 spoilers, optimistic nihilism, though it's not quite obvious, voltron games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 23:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14964075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.After all this is over.





	my atlantis

This is how the world turns. Slowly, gradually, at a million miles an hour. The sunrise whirls in the morning, and the sunset falls at night. Time is irrelevant. Space is forever. The landscape stretches at the borders of imagination. 

 

To live is to survive, and in that survival, thrive. It’s difficult on the good days and downright impossible on the bad, but the world doesn’t care when you cry, isn’t affected by your salty tears. It cares that you live. That you live, and survive, and possibly, thrive. 

 

With his white hair, Shiro looks ninety years old. He feels like it sometimes, too, when his joints creak and complain when he’s sitting in one place for too long. They’d bought packets of hair dye from the drugstore, but that’s washed out and grown out by now, and they’re all too lazy to get more. So his hair is white. That’s the price of coming back from the dead, so it seems. 

 

Keith had allowed (read: insisted) Shiro stay with him and his mom in their desert house. Krolia had been so disappointed at the state of the place; one story, no outer buildings. It was so small. 

 

“Your father and I built that place together,” Krolia has said, gazing out at where the house used to be. “It took years. But it was worth it, for you to have a home to live in.”

 

Keith had been quiet, laying his head on her shoulder. Shiro stayed with the wolf and tried not to feel like an intruder. 

 

“Deep thoughts you’ve got there,” Keith says, snapping Shiro out of his reverie. “Didn’t even hear me sneaking up on you.”

 

Shiro tilts his head back from where he’s sitting in the easy chair to give Keith an easy smile. “It’s progress.”

 

“It is progress.” Keith lays a hand on Shiro’s shoulder and gives away his own easy smile. “We’re getting there, aren’t we?”

 

“Getting where?”

 

“Somewhere normal.”

 

* * *

 

They sleep in separate beds in the same room. There’s barely enough room, but there’s room enough for this. 

 

On nights like this, filled with nightmares, it feels like a tomb. Even with Keith’s even breathing a handful of feet away, Shiro’s afraid the ceiling will collapse, taking them both somewhere the war hadn’t managed to. 

 

As if he knows he’s being thought of, or that he knows when Shiro’s suffering, Keith rolls over on his bed, facing Shiro. His hair spreads out over the pillow, and god, he looks so amazing with his hair out of his eyes. 

 

“Shiro?” Keith asks, his voice muffled with sleep. “You good?”

 

“Fine,” Shiro replies, a little too tightly. 

 

Keith, being Keith, picks up on it. He sits up, his thin blanket falling to his waist, and regards Shiro. “Nightmare?”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says, soft as rainfall. Not that they get that a lot out here. 

 

“Wanna come over here?”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says, and crawls out of his bed to fall into Keith’s. It’s an odd situation, with Shiro on top of the sheet and Keith under it, but they shift around until they’re comfortable. 

 

They’re halfway to happiness; it’s the closest they’ve been to perfection in a long, long time. 

 

Keith says he doesn’t remember how this happened in the morning, but Shiro can’t forget the dream. He couldn’t save them. He tells Keith and Krolia about it over breakfast, about how he was the only one left after everything had happened, how he watched the paladins bleed out and that witch with lightning coursing around her. It’s a hazy remembrance. Keith reaches across the table and holds his hand. 

 

Later, Shiro finds that the dreams stay far away when he’s in Keith’s arms. 

 

* * *

 

Keith and Krolia leave for the day to visit his father’s grave. Shiro’s alone in this house he has no right being in, surrounded by memories he’s not a part of; the quiet of the place is unnatural. They even took the wolf-dog with them. It’s just Shiro out here. 

 

He never really thought about the desert, in general. Sure, he spent some great years at the Garrison, but that was the  _ Garrison.  _ Cool, pristine walls, cold water when you needed it, all that jazz. It was a man-made area carved out of the wild and reckless beauty of the surrounding desert. As such, it wasn’t part of it. 

 

This, though, this was earth, wild and free. Shiro sat out on the porch and gazed at it for a while. 

 

One day, all of this will be for naught; one day, the desert will render all they have done as a species into nothingness. Out of the endless past they came, into the endless future they go. It is as simple as a blade of grass waving in the wind and as complex as the birth and death of galaxies; or perhaps it is as simple as that birth and death, and as complex as a blade of grass. 

 

The chair Shiro’s sitting on creaks as he shifts around. The world is quiet. Even the wind has silenced itself; holding the earth still. Waiting for something. 

 

Shiro waits as well, holds himself still as the immovable rocks around him. They have stood for millenia. They will stand for millenia more. 

 

Humans are foolish creatures. We have been around for a blip of time in the history of the world. We think we can change so much. The ancient thing we call our planet is slumbering, suffering our jabs into her skin to fuel our dreams of a wider universe. She is not to be tamed, however, and knows this, too, shall pass. 

 

Shiro, for now, takes time to appreciate her. 

 

* * *

 

It is late when they return, and Shiro sits inside with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Their little house is lit by a lantern, by which light Shiro reads; he sets down his book as the door opens and is not afraid. He would have been afraid, not so long ago, but time has moved, space has shifted, and he is no longer the same person he was. 

 

Keith has a warm smile on his face, just for him. “We’re home.”

 

Shiro has his own smile, just for Keith. “Welcome home.”

 

In the warm lantern light, spreading from its origin on a rough wooden table, Keith touches Shiro’s shoulder, then cups his cheek. It is gentle, tender; in the grand scheme of things insignificant, but to Shiro, the motion is everything. 

 

“I love you,” Shiro mumbles, Keith’s warm hand on his skin. 

 

“I love you too.”

  
  


 

 

 

**END**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> This was written for round 1 of the [Voltron Games](https://thevoltrongames.tumblr.com/%20) over on Tumblr. Go green lion green lion for the win
> 
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spinstersgrave.tumblr.com/%20)!! 
> 
> The quote in the summary is from Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American writer and poet.


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